Blog Tour/Giveaway!! The Risk of Happiness, by Cathrine Goldstein

Welcome to the blog tour for 

The Risk of Happiness,

sponsored by

YA Bound Book Tours!!

For my stop, I'm featuring 
an excerpt with mini-review!

There's also a tour-wide giveaway!!

The Risk of Happiness: The 
Punk Rocker

(The New York Artists Series, Book 3)

Cathrine Goldstein

Trade Paperback, 344 pages

The Wild Rose Press, Inc.

January 21, 2019

Contemporary Fiction, Humor, 
Music, Romance

Bad boy punk rock star Reale Lynxx never expected to see his ex-girlfriend, Amanda Simmons, again. And after she'd stomped on his heart and walked out on him six years ago, he's not so sure he wants to. Certainly Reale never imagined he would rescue Amanda and her son, Johnny, from drowning. But all it takes is one evening with her and Reale is ready to leave the past behind and try again.

Amanda never meant to hurt Reale and happily jumps heart-first into rebuilding their relationship. But when she confesses she left him to secretly raise their son, Reale grows livid, fighting her and gaining custody of Johnny…

When Reale realizes he was wrong for taking Johnny away, he tries to win Amanda back. But can she forgive the man who took her son? And can she ever trust Reale again, no matter how much she loves him?

Note

This is a mini-review of the excerpt below, 

and not the entire book.

I always write these when I'm 

REALLY interested in a particular novel, 

as I am in this one!

This time around, I have to mention that cover!

I don't wear ripped jeans, but this image

is really making me want to start! Lol.

As for the short excerpt, I think it's so cute!

Some readers might roll their eyes at this comment, but I find this vignette adorable. This is definitely going to be a fun read, as well as one that will tug at my emotions, too. Yes, I know this is a romance trope, but what can I say? I'm just a sucker for happy endings! Besides, each romance author

puts her own spin on these things.

Right off the bat, I like Reale. He sounds like a totally mischievous, fun-loving guy who actually has a deeper side -- well hidden, of course.

As for Amanda, I can tell she usually doesn't

let herself go as far as she obviously has in this excerpt. She's obviously a responsible person.

Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if it was Reale 

who encouraged her to "let down her hair".

I'm really looking forward to reading about 

this relationship, especially since there's a child involved. That makes it extra special! 

Reale winked. Damn, he was too happy. 

Johnny was completely locked into his tablet. She had a strict, no-tablet-at-the-table rule, but right now she’d make an exception just to find out if she had broken her own strict, do-not-sleep-with-your-rock-and-roll-ex-boyfriend-no-matter-how-sexy-he-is rule. “And um, where did we…or more specifically, did you…sleep last night?” 

“Don’t you remember?” He waltzed past her, stuffing two slices of whole grain bread into the toaster. 

“No. Uh, sorry…” 

Reale smiled, grabbing his pan and crossing to the table, expertly sliding scrambled eggs onto Johnny’s plate. “Seconds.” He nodded toward Johnny proudly. 

“But…you slept where exactly?” 

“Babe. You were drunk. I carried you in, changed you into your PJs, and slid you into bed. I slept on the couch. Scout’s honor.” He held up his peace fingers making a “V.” 

“That’s the wrong sign, dumbo.” She smirked. “So nothing happened?” 

He came closer, whispering. “As tempting as it was—what with your ruddy glow and contagious laugh, I figured after you had sung every song on my last CD to me—twice—you were perhaps a bit too intoxicated to partake in any additional activities that evening. Or morning.”

 

Purchase Links

Amazon US/Amazon UK/Amazon CA

Barnes & Noble/iTunes

Wild Rose Press

Check out the other books 
in the series!!

Click on the book covers for the Goodreads pages!

Purchase Links

Amazon US/Amazon UK/Amazon CA

Bookbub/iTunes

Barnes & Noble/Wild Rose Press

Purchase Links

Amazon US/Amazon UK/Amazon CA

Bookbub/iTunes

Barnes & Noble/Wild Rose Press

a Rafflecopter giveaway

I am a bestselling author and an NYC girl at heart. I write “gritty romance,” in the genres of YA, NA; women’s fiction; and romance. I’m also the author of The Letting and The Coupling, books 1 and 2 of The Letting series. 

I began my career as an award-winning playwright, and I am a proud member of RWA, PAN. I have my BA in English and my MA in Theatre.
 
I am a fan of Luna Bars, decaf coffee, yoga, Hemingway, and Bukowski—and the loves of my life are my husband and my two young girls.
 
To find out more about me; Summer of Irreverence, the first book in The New York Artists Series—standalone novels about strong, artistic men, and the smart, unexpected women they fall for; The Letting series; and what’s coming soon, please visit my website at the link below!

Website
Blog/Twitter/Facebook
Goodreads/Instagram
Pinterest/Bookbub
Amazon Author Page



To access the complete tour schedule, just click on the button below!!

Haunted Halloween Spooktacular: Warlock Holmes Series, by G.S. Denning

Welcome to the blog tour for

The Warlock Holmes Series,

sponsored by

Bewitching Book Tours!

For my stop, I'm featuring a Guest Post by the author, G.S. Denning!

There's also a tour-wide giveaway!!

What do you think of when someone mentions Sherlock Holmes? The epitome of fictional detectives? A series of stories so timely and so visionary that they revolutionized police-work, the world over? A deerstalker? A pipe? Benedict Cumberbatch’s perfect cheek-bones?

You wouldn’t be wrong.

But in this season of fun-filled frights, let’s take a moment to reflect on one oft-overlooked aspect of the world’s favorite detective:

He’s really creepy.

No. Seriously. Just pleasantly-but-sometimes-right-to-the-edge-of-discomfortingly creepy.

Do you know where the modern tradition of Halloween takes its roots? Dartmoor. Arthur Conan Doyle repeatedly set his adventures out upon the moor in abandoned hallows filled with lethal peat-bogs, fog, reeds and wisp-light. Want to see Holmes and Watson chasing a seemingly-demonic hound across moonlit moor? Well then, it’s no wonder The Hound of the Baskervilles is amongst the most popular of Doyle’s original 60 stories.

Now, if you want to see them chasing an actually-demonic hound across a moonlit moor, you’ll have to check out my second book: The Hell-hound of the Baskervilles. And for those of you who just rolled their eyes at how easy it must have been for me to come up with that angle: yeah, that’s sort of my point. You don’t have to work hard to make Sherlock Holmes macabre. It’s there already.

One of the less-known stories is titled The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire; it features a mother who’s been caught sucking blood out of the neck of her own infant. Even in 1898, not great parenting.

Or how about The Adventure of the Engineer’s Thumb? It features not just the aforementioned disembodied thumb, but also its owner, trapped in a room-sized hydraulic press, debating if he should stand up, or sit down or lie face up or… Well, just what exactly is the least-painful way to be slowly crushed to death? It’s ironic that the modern detective story is attributed to Edgar Alan Poe, because in moments such as these, Doyle absolutely equals Poe’s famous brand of dark introspection. 

Or maybe you’d just like to see Sherlock murder a dog. Would that be nice? Dog murder, anyone?

Because that’s how he unravels his very first case, A Study in Scarlet. Yep. No lie. To figure out if the pills he’s recovered are poisonous, he steals his neighbor girl’s dog and feeds it half of each pill. 

Guess what? (1887 spoilers follow…) Totally poison. There is something uniquely Halloween-ish about a character who thinks that is acceptable behavior. Oh yeah, and half the people he meets seem to think the only way he could possibly know the things he knows is through dark magic. They’re wrong. 

He’s not magical. But he is probably sociopathic. And he’s definitely not on the ASPA’s top 10 list of great guys.

So if Halloween makes you think about goblins, vampires, demonic possession and soul-binding magic… Well, pick up a copy of my first book, A Study in Brimstone. It’s all in there.

But if you’ve got a little time to kill before All-Hallow’s Eve, and if you’ve got a mind for the classics, here’s what you do:

You pull your favorite chair up to next to a window on a rainy night. You get some fleece pants and a comfy blanket. You brew up a nice cup of tea. Light a couple candles. Then snuggle down and spend a little cozy murder time with the undisputed-number-one-original-king-of-creepy-daddy-detectives, Mr. Sherlock Holmes.

A Study in Brimstone
(Warlock Holmes, Book 1)
G.S. Denning
Trade Paperback, 336 pages
Titan Books, May 17, 2016
Classics Retelling, Humor, Mystery, Paranormal Fiction, Thrillers, Urban Fantasy

Synopsis: Sherlock Holmes is an unparalleled genius who uses the gift of deduction and reason to solve the most vexing of crimes.

Warlock Holmes, however, is an idiot. A good man, perhaps; a font of arcane power, certainly. But he’s brilliantly dim. Frankly, he couldn’t deduce his way out of a paper bag. The only thing he has really got going for him are the might of a thousand demons and his stalwart flatmate. Thankfully, Dr. Watson is always there to aid him through the treacherous shoals of Victorian propriety… and save him from a gruesome death every now and again.

An imaginative, irreverent and addictive reimagining of the world’s favourite detective, Warlock Holmes retains the charm, tone and feel of the original stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle while finally giving the flat at 221b Baker Street what it’s been missing for all these years: an alchemy table.

Reimagining six stories, this riotous mash-up is a glorious new take on the ever-popular Sherlock Holmes myth, featuring the vampire Inspector Vladislav Lestrade, the ogre Inspector Torg Grogsson, and Dr. Watson, the true detective at 221b. And Sherlock. A warlock.

Purchase Links
Amazon US/Amazon UK/Amazon CA

  The Hell-Hound of the Baskervilles

(Warlock Holmes, Book 2)

G.S. Denning

Trade Paperback, 320 pages

Titan Books, May 16, 2017

Classics Retelling, Humor, Mystery, Paranormal Fiction,
Thrillers, Urban Fantasy

Synopsis:  The game's afoot once more as Holmes and Watson face off against Moriarty's gang, the Pinkertons, flesh-eating horses, a parliament of imps, boredom, Surrey, a disappointing butler demon, a succubus, a wicked lord, an overly-Canadian lord, a tricycle-fight to the death and the dreaded Pumpcrow. Oh, and a hell-hound, one assumes.

Purchase Links

Amazon US/Amazon UK/Amazon CA

My Grave Ritual
(Warlock Holmes, Book 3)
G.S. Denning
Trade Paperback, 432 pages
Titan Books, May 15, 2018
Classics Retelling, Humor, Mystery, Paranormal Fiction, Thrillers, Urban Fantasy


Synopsis: "If you ever wondered how much better Sherlock would be if people could hurl hellfire at each other, well this one is for you." -- Starburst Magazine on A Study in Brimstone

Warlock Holmes and Dr John Watson find themselves inconvenienced by a variety of eldritch beings, and the fact that one of them has goat legs. Christmas brings a goose that doesn't let being cooked slow him down, then they meet an electricity demon, discover why being a redhead is even tricker than one might imagine, and Holmes attempts an Irish accent. And naturally Moriarty is hanging around in some form or other.

Purchase Links
Amazon US/Amazon UK/Amazon CA

a Rafflecopter giveaway

G.S. Denning furiously studied reading and math until he could play Dungeons and Dragons. His love of DandD expanded to a passion for all things in the sci-fi and fantasy realm, particularly when spliced with comedy - Douglas Adams, Terry Pratchett, Monty Python, Red Dwarf, Black Adder, Whose Line Is It Anyway, Dr. Who, and the holiest of holies: The Princess Bride.

He learned his story-telling skills on the improv stage as a member of Orlando Theatersports, Seattle Theatersports, Jet City Improv, and as a Disney Performer at Epcot. G.S. also worked for Nintendo and Wizards of the Coast

Finally, after realizing that humanity had not used the pun "Warlock Holmes" yet, he sat down to begin his first novel series: a dark-comic retelling of Arthur Conan Doyle's classic Sherlock Holmes stories. 

G.S. Lives in Las Vegas with The Best Wife and The Best Children.

Website/Facebook/Goodreads
Twitter/Instagram
Amazon Author Page




You can access the complete blog tour schedule by clicking on 
the button below!

Book Review: Ninth Grade Slays, by Heather Brewer

Ninth Grade Slays
(The Chronicles of Vladimir Tod, Book 2)
Heather Brewer
Trade Paperback, 278 pages
Speak, January 22, 2009
Humor, Paranormal Fiction, Urban Fantasy, Young Adult Fiction

Synopsis: Freshman year stinks for Vlad Tod. Bullies still harass him. The photographer from the school newspaper is tailing him. And failing his studies could be deadly. A trip to Siberia gives ?study abroad? a whole new meaning as Vlad connects with other vampires and advances his mind-control abilities, but will he return home with the skills to recognize a vampire slayer when he sees one? In this thrilling sequel to Eighth Grade Bites, Vlad must confront the secrets of the past and battle forces that once again threaten his life.

The humor continues in this second installment of The Chronicles of Vladimir Tod. (However, so does the drama!) And he's such a likable kid, too! It's just that he happens to be a vampire. But he doesn't bite people, or kill them for their blood. (Yeah, I don't like it, either, when a vamp drinks blood....but at least Vlad is not biting people. And he can't help being what he is; he was born that way.)

I'm really loving this series! The characters are just SO wonderful! Vlad is, in every other respect, just like any other teen boy entering high school. He has a longtime crush on Meredith, a pretty girl at school, and he has homework to do and tests to take. Of course, he's into violent, gory video games, again, just like most boys his age. What makes him extra special, though, is his sensitive heart. This might sound cheesy to some, but it's precisely what I find so endearing about Vlad. He's still grieving the deaths of his parents three years previously. His dad, whom he greatly admired, was a vampire, and his mom, a human. From details revealed by the author, it's very evident that his parents loved each other very much. Since such unions are forbidden by the vampire society in this series, however, Vlad's dad took a HUGE risk in marrying Vlad's mom.

Vlad has a great best friend, Henry, who is very popular at school, in contrast to Vlad, who is pretty much an outcast. However, the two have a wonderful friendship, and Henry has kept Vlad's secret for as long as they've been friends.

As in most YA novels (the Harry Potter series is a clear example of this), the hero gets bullied, and that's also the case here. Two of Vlad's classmates, Bill and Tom, love to beat him up, disdainfully calling him "Goth Boy". As a vampire, I'm sure Vlad could have easily hurt them even more than they did him, but, of course, he's ethically bound not to hurt humans, or give his secret away. This is another factor that made me like Vlad even more!

In this second novel, a new danger looms for our hero -- there's a vampire slayer on the hunt for him. The reader doesn't get to know just who this person is until almost the end of the novel, but I had a feeling I knew that person's identity, and I was proven right. There was a pretty big clue at one point in the story, and I was able to nail it! This did not make me enjoy the whole story any less, though. 

This book also adds some intrigue to the mix. Is Vlad the "Pravus", a vampire prophesied to rule vampire society worldwide, making slaves out of all humans? This is something that will be developed further as the series moves along, but indications are that such a terrible destiny cannot possibly be in store for Vlad.

Like the first book, this reads like a Middle Grade, although I think there will be a natural progression towards a more YA-type style, as Vlad moves on to higher grades in high school. The style used in these two first books did not dampen my enjoyment of them at all, however. They're just SO much fun! Of course, there's also drama involved, but everything works out in the end. That's why I prefer to read paranormal fiction and urban fantasy, especially at this time of year. No horror novels or movies for me, thank you very much! Just give me some supernatural shenanigans, and I know I'll enjoy the Halloween season! 

Some interesting new characters are introduced in this book, such as Uncle Otis's vampire friend, Vikas, who lives in Siberia. (It turened that Vlad's eccentric teacher, Mr. Otis Otis, in the first book, was really his uncle.) Wait, say what? Yes, that's right -- Siberia, located in Russia. Vlad and his uncle fly there, so that Vikas can coach Vlad on the finer points of telepathy and mind control. Mind control? Yes, indeed, and this is one aspect of the novel that gave me pause, because the vamps in it use this mind control on humans. For what it's worth, though, Otis was not at all happy about Vlad doing this -- especially not with his friends and relatives. 

Another interesting new character is Joss, who is Henry's cousin, and is visiting Vlad's hometown of Bathory for the summer. He and Vlad become good friends, as well, although Joss is not in on Vlad's secret.

Just as in the first novel, the action heats up in the last third of the story, and Vlad has to deal with a very unexpected development. His aunt and uncle become involved, as does Vikas, and things look pretty grim for a while. But again, "all's well that ends well", and Brewer sets things up for the third novel, which I hope to start reading very soon!

This is a highly addictive series! The first book, Eighth Grade Bites, has close to 33,000 ratings, and 2,710 reviews, on Goodreads! This second book doesn't have quite that many ratings and reviews, but is still pretty popular. And so are the rest of the books! I'm adding this series to my collection of favorite vampire (non-Dracula clones, of course) series!

I would highly recommend this book, as well as the others in The Chronicles of Vladimir Tod, to all paranormal fiction and urban fantasy fans, especially fans of Young Adult Fiction. These books are very entertaining, fun, and full of great characters whom one grows to love and root for. They're very real, as well. I felt totally drawn into Vlad's world, as well as his uncanny, crazy adventures. I will be sorry to come to the last book in the series....But perhaps Brewer will decide to do a spinoff series about these characters at some time in the future. Keeping my fingers crossed! Way to go, Brewer!! 

MY RATING: 

Heather Brewer is the pseudonym of Zac Brewer. Zac is the NYT bestselling author of The Chronicles of Vladimir Tod series, as well as The Slayer Chronicles series, Soulbound, The Cemetery Boys, "The Blood Between Us", and more short stories than he can recall.

Website/Goodreads/Twitter

Facebook

Amazon Author Page